Subsea traps, including crab, lobster and other baited underwater fish traps, are used widely to catch such marine animals for food and other purposes. A great number of separate, individual spaced traps are usually set out by one or two fishermen on a boat and these must be serviced and inspected from time to time in order to obtain the catch and rebait the traps. Each trap rests on the bottom of the body of water and is attached to a line that must be accessible to the fisherman in a boat on the surface of the water. Buoys are attached to the line to make the line readily accessible to the fisherman. The servicing of a string of traps is a time-consuming and back breaking job, usually accomplished by one or two fishermen in a small boat. There has been for many years a need for an inexpensive mechanical and power means to assist a fisherman in servicing a series or string of such subsea traps.
It is an object of this invention to provide a novel mechanical harvesting apparatus for snagging lines to subsea traps, bringing the traps to the surface for servicing, and releasing rebaited traps to settle to the bottom again. It is another object of this invention to provide such an apparatus which is mountable on a boat that can service many lines of spaced subsea traps.
The subsea trap harvesting apparatus according to this invention allows a boat captain to maintain a constant speed as he pilots his boat along a series of spaced traps and as the boat approaches a trap, the apparatus will snag the line and buoy. Once the line is hooked, a crewman will activate the apparatus to pull the line connected to the trap up and around a hydroslave. The hydroslave will then pull the trap and its contents to the surface. The crewman can then empty and re-bait the trap. Upon emptying the trap the crewman resets the apparatus to capture the next line and buoy of the next trap as the boat approaches it. The harvesting apparatus thus will relieve the crew of some of the strenuous work involved with commercial subsea trap operations, greatly reduce worker fatigue and enhance a boat's productivity. Still other objects will become apparent from the more detailed description which follows.